


"The Ghost and Mrs Mars"

by wily_one24



Category: Veronica Mars - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-19
Updated: 2007-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 11:49:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wily_one24/pseuds/wily_one24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If she had to face her truths, so did he.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> While Veronica and Lamb are the main characters of this fic, Veronica and Logan are the featured romantic couple. However, if you squint, you may see hints of Veronica/Lamb, and if you squint even harder than that, you might even see Veronica/Logan/Lamb (VeLoLa, just like cherry-cola!).

**Spoilers:** Takes place just after 3.14 "Mars Bars", but assumes information from 3.15 "Papa's Cabin", so  SPOILERS AHOY.  
 **Warnings:** Sexual content. Voyeurism.  
 **Disclaimer:** This is... I have no idea. But they don't belong to me. Nah uh.  


Written for both the [](http://vm-library.livejournal.com/profile)[**vm_library**](http://vm-library.livejournal.com/) ['Someone's Watching' Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/vm_library/36105.html) *and* [](http://picking-losers.livejournal.com/profile)[**picking_losers**](http://picking-losers.livejournal.com/) ['Out Like A Lamb' Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/picking_losers/14025.html). Yes, my fic is a challenge slut, so sue me.

*~*~*~*  
 **THE GHOST AND MRS MARS**  
*~*~*~*

The first time she saw him she had been existing on coffee, two sleepless nights and a slightly queasy belly she couldn’t exactly deny had been caused by arguments with her father. She was lying, - moping, contemplating, whatever, she refused to call it grieving – on the couch while stroking Backup’s head as his jaw rested heavily on the side of her hip.

As acting Sheriff, Keith had thought it only fitting to say goodbye and he hadn’t understood her reluctance to go with him. She hadn’t felt the need to explain why the last thing she wanted to do was spend the day listening to people eulogize in rhapsody about a man who had driven her into fits of frustration and misery since the day he’d laughed at her rape and obliterated any form of respect she might have had for him. So she’d gone with the bland, but always safe route of highlighting the hypocrisy of humiliating the man, both to his face and behind his back, while he was alive and then pretending to pay respects after his death.

There was a fine line between healthy disagreements and holding too tightly to a grudge, her father had told her with disappointed eyes, but he’d left the apartment alone.

It wasn’t guilt, she steadfastly insisted inside her head, not at all, just because the last thing she’d said to him had been to call him a jerk. There was no guilt associated with it, because when all things were done and said he really was a jerk, especially to her.

She tried to ignore the small part of her brain that insisted he hadn’t always been that way, that there had been times, mostly before, but some after the whole Lilly Kane murder slash Sheriff ousting slash rape laughing debacle, where he had shown that he could be partly human.

Veronica could mourn the death of that man, the one who smiled and joked and used his brain to make humane decisions, if she actually acknowledged him, but she refused to part with all the harder, viler depictions of him.

Maybe it was the coward’s way out, holding close to the easier version of him being a dick, than to think about any other form of a man who had gone to great lengths to thwart her every step.

“Veronica Mars.”

The lilt, heavily threaded with sarcasm and dark, knowing amusement, hit too close to home and she closed her eyes.

“Go away, you’re not here.”

“Well.” He considered smugly. “I’d have to say you’re wrong on that one. Again. Because here I am and, oh look, here you are.”

The implication was not lost on her and, if it really was her own subconscious trying to force her into facing something she didn’t want to, she didn’t really see any need to pander to it.

“Where else would I be? Pray tell?”

“Well, not that I blame you.” And to his credit, or possibly her own sleep deprived mind’s credit – she wasn’t sure which – when she peeled open one eye to look, his face was actually quite calm and devoid of any bitterness. “That’s the last place I’d want to be.”

Veronica shrugged, disbelief evident in her face and in her tone.

“Right. Like you wouldn’t lap it all up, everyone singing your praises as if you were the love child of Mother Theresa and Ghandi, Neptune’s own living saint.”

She sat up, breathed in once and then again, and when the apparition didn’t budge, she stood up and walked towards the kitchen, opening the fridge door.

“You couldn’t pay me to listen to all their drivel.” She heard the words behind her, but she ignored them. “You’d be about the only one worth listening to.”

It happened without warning and Veronica spat laughter into a plate of leftover chicken. It burst out of her like a gunshot blast.

“Me?” Her fingers curled around the edge of the door as she turned around, feeling the cool air of the fridge waft over her neck. “Are you kidding? You don’t even want to hear the things I’d say.”

He sighed, she could see it, and if she had to put a name to the expression on his face as he leaned against the bench, she’d have to call it wistful.

“But at least it would be true.” The words were soft, almost sad. “And possibly more interesting.”

Her appetite wasn’t any better than it had been in days, but she had to have something to do. So she grabbed the plate of chicken and some cheese, some lettuce and tomato and mayo and anything she could see on the shelves, slamming them on the bench.

Anything rather than look at the man standing, plain as day, with his hip jutting out in a relaxed pose against her end table. He was dressed casually, in civilian clothes, and it jarred in her head, spoke against something in her memory.

He looked too relaxed, too comfortable, too different to what she was used to.

Not to mention the fact that he was supposed to be dead. They were burying his body that very day.

“Why are you here?” Her hands shook as she slathered butter on some bread, not bothering to take any care with it at all. “What possible reason could you have to be here?”

He shrugged, his face clouding for a second.

It was in that moment that she understood the difference. He wasn’t standing there as if nothing had happened, because his movements were too smooth, too fluid, and too frictionless. He didn’t affect anything around him and he barely affected himself.

It made her nervous and slightly bitter.

“I don’t know.” And, by the sound of it, he really didn’t. “I’ve never done this before.”

She sighed.

“Do you have a mission?” At his confused look, she continued. “Any unfinished business? And be careful how you answer that, because I am not going around kicking poor defenseless puppies on your say so.”

He shook his head slowly.

“Nothing you didn’t get to do before you… you know…” At the slightly devious glint that entered his eyes, she knew he was going to make her say it. So she took a breath and made her face blank. “Bit the big one? Got whacked like a little arcade mole?”

His expression flickered for a second, momentary surprise at her terminology, before the contemplative look returned.

“Well, there was this one girl I really wanted to sleep with. Hot, too. Brunette, really big…” His hands mimicked his words and his eyebrows looked her up and down speculatively. “You think you wanna do that for me? I’ll watch.”

She rolled her eyes and slammed a limp bit of lettuce down on the sandwich.

“You wish.”

“Actually.” He agreed, his voice quite pleasant. “Yeah, I really do.”

“Well.” She nodded as she twisted the cap back onto the mayo. “Good to know there’s still piggery in the afterlife. Congratulations for confirming that bit of vital knowledge for the human race.”

Her back was turned when he spoke again.

“Veronica.” There was a catch of worry in his voice, just the slightest bit of confusion that made her take a breath before turning back. “I don’t know why I’m here or what I’m supposed to be doing or anything like that. I just am.”

“Huh.” She considered her options as she trailed a finger over the bench and avoided looking directly at him. “I’m trying to put this delicately, but… You do know that you’re…?”

“Dead?” He asked bluntly. “Yes, I got that memo when my brain was bashed in, thanks. The skull might have caved, but the memory’s intact.”

The imagery wasn’t entirely pleasant. She hadn’t exactly seen Donald Lamb splayed out on the floor with violent red stains seeping from his head, but she hadn’t really needed to. That visual was striking enough just once, without a replay. In her head, she’d imagined he’d looked a lot like Lilly.

It had just taken him several more agonizing hours to pass.

“Alright then.” She toyed with the plate, catching a crumb underneath the nail of her forefinger. “That saves one awkward conversation. Why me?”

The look he gave her was thick with disbelief and annoyance.

“Am I suddenly speaking another language? I. Don’t. Know. Look, I just appeared. You tell me.”

Veronica considered that for several seconds before she brightened.

“Maybe this is some kind of retribution thing? Where you have to realize exactly how much of a bastard you were.” She held her breath for timing and effect. “A lot. In case that helps. Does it help? Do you see a light?”

He gave her a leveled look that clearly did not speak of amusement.

“No.”

“Okay then, what else? Do you need my forgiveness?” She waived her hand at him dismissively. “Because you got it. I forgive you, for everything. Off you go. Bye now. Don’t let the door hit you in the astral plane on the way out.”

His response was a slow mime of a yawn.

“Perhaps if you’d sounded the least sincere?”

She lowered her eyebrows in a glare.

“Go. Away.”

“What? Like this is fun for me? You think I want to spend my last remaining days on the this planet with you?”

She gestured around the apartment.

“Apparently.”

They looked at each other and she began to feel a growing unease with entire situation. It wasn’t a welcome relief like it had been when Lilly had visited her. It was awkward and uncomfortable and they hadn’t even liked each other when he was alive, she saw no reason to change her mind after his death, despite the slightly lost look he was exuding.

“Look.” He finally spoke. “Don’t you do this sort of thing?”

Her eyebrows rose in disbelief.

“Talk to dead people? No. Do I look like Jennifer Love Hewitt? I’m a detective, not a medium. Ooh, hey, go find Patricia Arquette or Jensen Ackles, maybe they can shuffle you along.”

Maybe it was her imagination, but he looked like he was actually pouting.

“They’re not real.”

The humor of the situation, dark though it might be, made her mouth curve up in a reluctant smile. She couldn’t help it.

“Hate to break it to you, Deputy, but have you checked a mirror lately? ‘Cause neither are you.”

“Veronica.” And she could tell by the tone in his voice that he was serious. “Help me.”

She looked down at the sandwich on the plate and her stomach revolted. It felt like she was going to throw up. He had no right to ask that of her, none at all. In all probability, she should throw it all back in his face and feel no remorse. If the situations were reversed, he’d do the same to her without blinking. She knew it.

When she looked up, she knew he could read the answer in her eyes.

“You never helped me.”

He flickered and then she was alone.

***

Her laughter was the first thing he heard.

It sounded strange to him, alien, and he realized that it had been years since he’d seen her actually enjoy anything. In his office, she’d been all business, a smartass with a smart attitude and just enough brains to continue pulling it off, but she’d never actually relaxed in his presence, never eased into anything that could be called fun.

She was standing at the door saying goodbye to her friend and he waited for her to turn around.

“Glad to know the mourning period lasted all of one day.”

There were very few times in his memory when she was genuinely surprised. He could see the shock on her face when she saw him.

“It’s…” There was a blush on her cheek, rising up from her neck, and he watched it with interest, especially when her left hand came up to fiddle with her necklace. “It’s been over three weeks.”

“Oh.” That was all he could say.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.” She continued. “After you left, I thought… I hoped I was just tired and you weren’t real.”

He couldn’t help studying her. She looked different. Not in any tangible way, not that he could name, her hair was still long and the bones of her face were still delicate, but she caught his attention in a way she never had before.

She looked tired and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. He bit down on the sarcastic reply that had immediately come to mind, something about the possibility of her actually being crazy and him being a figment of her hallucinogenic mind.

“So.” He decided to stick to the deeper topics instead. “You don’t actually seem all that surprised to see me. Despite the…”

His hand waved absently up above his head. She winced; he caught it.

“Well, I, uh…” She took a deep breath and then her words came out in a rush, hurried and brushed over. “I used to see Lilly sometimes. After she died.”

Lilly. The name stuck in his head for a moment before it all rushed back. Lilly Kane, of course. As if he was able to forget. The awkwardness of the suggested ‘after’ of her explanation hit him, washed over him like the absurdity of him being welcome in her living room.

“It’s a lot like that!” Her obviously false cheerful voice supplied. “Except she had better fashion sense. And I liked her.”

The stress was on the last two words. Lamb ignored it.

“There’s nothing wrong with my fashion sense, thank you.” He looked down at the plain shirt and slacks he had, apparently, appeared in. They weren’t impressive, but they weren’t shabby either. “You said you used to see her? What happened? How did you…?”

“Get rid of her?” The words were a tad blunt, but the tone of voice was almost amused. “I didn’t, really. She just stopped coming. Although that was after I figured out who really killed her. Maybe that’s it.”

Her eyes looked him up and down speculatively and then she shook her head.

“But we know who killed you, so…” A quick shrug. “Guess that’s off the list.”

A flicker of anger passed through him, sudden and unexpected. Even as he looked down he saw the image of himself fade and eddy with his own burgeoning fury. He hadn’t thought about that day, not really, not in the brief few visits he’d had with her, the only times he could remember, and there hadn’t been any real emotions connected to them.

It surged through him like a jolt, bitter and sharp.

“What’d you do?” He spat. “Send him a fruit basket?”

Her face shimmied, from the rapid, reluctant concern she’d started to show to definite distaste.

“Yeah, well, we really should send the family something, shouldn’t we? It’d be rude not to.” But her heart wasn’t exactly in it, he could tell. “But he’s dead, Sacks shot him, minutes after…”

The memory slammed into him with a rush, that edgy, nervous voice above him as he lay on the floor. He blinked and shook his head, tried to dislodge the oozing wet feeling from the back of his skull, that slightly disconnected feeling of observing without participating. The pain that hadn’t really hurt.

“Sacks.”

He whispered it absently as he got flashes of an eager face and uncertain eyes.

“Yeah.” Her voice was soft when she confirmed it. “He’s taken it pretty hard though. He tries to hide it, but Dad’s still keeping him on light duties for now.”

He almost missed the meaning behind the sentence. Almost.

“Your dad?” Bitterness welled from somewhere he couldn’t name. “Your fucking…? Of course. I bet they didn’t even wait ‘til I was cold, did they? Called up Keith Golden Child Mars the minute I was on the fucking slab…”

But she didn’t back down, she barely even blinked.

“At least he’ll do the job.”

The message was clear.

This was a standoff that neither of them would win.

***

Veronica looked at herself in the mirror.

It was late in the day, still morning, but later than she liked. She didn’t have classes and there was no extra work waiting for her at Mars Investigations, or what was left of it, there was really nothing pressing calling her attention.

She vaguely thought about calling Wallace and asking what he was up to, but she knew he was busy with basketball. Mac had a major assignment due in the next week. And with that, her incredibly full social calendar was cleared.

Her face looked drawn out and she didn’t really want to admit it, but she was _bored_.

Many, many hours of grueling bamboo torture and perhaps a few rounds of Celine Dion would be needed before she ever admitted to the fact that there were plenty of things to occupy her mind, it was just that none of them were particularly Logan shaped.

“Mirror, mirror.”

She nearly screamed out loud at the voice that came from behind her.

“What?” Her hands automatically went to tighten the towel around her torso. “What are you doing?”

“Isn’t that what you were doing?” Lamb asked with a touch of boredom as he sat on the edge of the bathtub. “Gazing at your reflection? Wondering who in the world could possibly be as fair as you?”

She could feel her mouth flatten into a straight line.

“I meant, what are you doing sneaking up to me when I’m in the shower?”

His eyes dragged slowly, first down her body and then up it. She shivered under the stare, her legs poking out beneath the slightly frayed cloth. It was green and faded and not their best, but she had hardly expected company.

Somehow, clutching a towel to her body made her feel worse than naked in front of him and it made her brittle.

“You’re hardly still in the shower.” He pointed out logically. “But if you really wanted to fix that, I wouldn’t complain.”

Her throat closed in protest.

“That’s… gah.” And she shook off the implication. “Are you trying to flirt with me?”

“That depends.” He winked. “Will it make you drop the towel?”

She held the towel tightly in her left hand while she pointed to the door with the other.

“Out.”

It wasn’t a suggestion and he stood up, shrugging as he did in a way that implied it was her loss, and then backed out of the room. She had to physically stop herself from shuddering or even shrieking like a little girl when he slipped through the door without opening it.

When she had finally thrown on some clothes and managed to get the tangle of her hair under control, Veronica approached her room with caution.

He was standing with his hands behind his back, an impossibly innocent gesture favored by the guilty. Her eyes narrowed.

“Some rules, if you’re going to just pop in and out whenever you want.” He spun around at her words. “One, you are never to appear when I am bathing, changing, or am similarly naked or in states of undress. Capiche?”

He pouted.

“Spoil all my fun.” And then his face lit up. “What about during… you know?”

“Huh?” It was probably a very sad thing that it took several moments of blank confusion before the idea became clear. She needed a social life, stat. “Oh. Oh, well, that’s not something to worry about right now. You’re more likely to walk in on Backup humping the neighbor’s Doberman, but yes, rule number one includes any time with guys.”

The very thought was enough to make her celibate for life.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“For your information. I don’t exactly control these things, whatever they are, visits, hauntings, manifestations, whatever. They just happen.” His hands spread out in a gesture of compliance. “But if it makes you feel any better, I promise not to look.”

There really was no guide for picking the truth from lies when talking to the dead, she realized. He had no pulse rate that could visibly quicken under her eye; his breathing didn’t change, because he didn’t really breathe. The only things she had to go on were his eyes.

She had learned the hard way years ago not to trust his eyes.

“Just…” Spasms ran down her spine. “Just don’t.”

“And…?” He prompted. “That was rule one, what are the rest?”

“The rest…” She stalled for a second, before giving in. “Are yet to come. I reserve the right to create them upon demand. I’m fairly sure we’ll need lots more.”

He looked at her for a second, a heavy look that made her want to step back. She felt naked again.

“Veronica?” And then she saw him gesture to her desk. “What is that?”

That, was familiar. That, she could do.

She rushed over to the open file and began shuffling papers back into order, slamming the plain manila cover shut from his view. Her secrecy skills were obviously lacking, although, in her defense, when she had been working on it earlier, she hadn’t been expecting a room full of company.

“Nothing.” She lied. “Don’t worry…”

“I’m not worried.” He bluffed. She could tell it was a bluff, because he used the same expression that Logan used, that her own father used, right before they began one of their lectures. “I don’t care, really, but I know that name. You can’t be serious about…”

“It’s just a case.” She brushed him off. “It doesn’t matter.”

He stepped towards her then, with a frustrated look on his face, and his whole body faded in and out, fizzled, like a faulty light bulb. He’d done the same thing the last time, she remembered. It was vaguely disturbing.

“He’s known to the police, Veronica.” The words were gritted out and the sensation of hearing them as such was just as off putting. He didn’t have anything to grit against and she wondered if he did it out of habit. “He’s a dangerous man and you’re going to follow him?”

Her jaw dropped.

“You read it? You read my stuff?” And then she shut it, snapped her teeth closed hard. “Rule number two, no going through my personal property.”

He glared and she folded her arms.

“It’s just a case.” She insisted again. “And it’s not even scheduled until Saturday. There’s nothing wrong with…”

His foot lifted and fell and she imagined he was trying to tap it.

“If you won’t drop it.” She could recognize a plea bargain in any language, even his. “Then at least take someone with you.”

“Oh.” The best defense was a good offense. “What, like you? What are you going to do? Moan and rattle some chains if I get in trouble? You’re not real! I have my taser and a very possessive pit bull, I’m fine.”

Forty five minutes and fourteen very loud verses of ‘I’m Henry the Eighth, I am’ later, Veronica ceded.

“Fine!” She huffed. “Fine! I’ll call someone.”

The singing stopped and she used the blessed moments of silence to dial a familiar number.

“Veronica?”

It was answered after the fourth ring and she imagined he’d given it a brief, bored glance before needing a second look, just to make sure.

“Yeah.” Her forefinger toyed with the edge of the phone as she talked. Nope, there was nothing awkward about the conversation, nothing at all. “Hi Logan.”

She heard the intake of breath and the small shuffle and could picture him sitting up straighter. She wondered where he was, whether he was somewhere on campus or sitting in his hotel suite. He wasn’t one for early mornings, at ten thirty he was more than likely just starting his day.

Her traitorous brain pictured him wearing sleep pants slung over his hips and not much else, bare feet poking out of the bottom and narrow, naked waist tapering upwards.

“Are you okay?” The concern in his voice was real and it made her teeth itch. “What’s wrong?”

Her eyes narrowed at Lamb across the room.

“I’m fine, really.” And then she turned her back to face an empty wall. “I was just wondering… huh…”

There was no easy way to say it and the silence dragged between them as he waited patiently for her to finish. On the theory of ripping the bandaid right off, she breathed in and spurted the rest of the words out quickly. Maybe they’d be easier to deal with if they came out faster.

“Do you remember that guy you hired to follow me around?”

Well, there you go. She didn’t believe the added speed would help. The silence grew deep and uncomfortable.

“Veronica.” Logan sighed eventually, both weary and wary, she could hear the delicate maneuvering of his brain trying to register the topic. “We’ve had this argument already. If you’ve got nothing new...”

“No!” She cringed at the too desperate sound of her voice. “It’s not that, really, I promise. What I wanted, I just… Do you still have his number?”

She counted less than two seconds before she heard the sound of keys through the phone.

“What’s wrong?” He had definitely slipped into his no arguments, demanding, just answer, get out of my way mode. “Are you in trouble? Is someone bothering you? What?”

The pads of her fingers slid down the side of the phone.

“No, really. I’m fine.” She missed him and it hurt. “I promise, Logan, really. I just have this job and it’s a little… risky… I thought maybe I could use some extra muscle is all.”

The terminology hurt. They both knew she wouldn’t ask for a usual case, but she also knew that any real use of words like ‘dangerous’, ‘potentially harmful’ and/or ‘this guy is a criminal whack job’ would push him over the edge. Risky seemed to be a delicate balance.

“I don’t have his number anymore.”

Veronica leaned her chin into her neck with her eyes closed. She could hear everything. The sounds of his fingers running through the bristle on his obviously unshaven chin, the small whistle of air through his nostrils as he thought things over. She heard it and it hurt.

“But I’ll do it.” He insisted. “I’m come with you. When is it?”

“No.” Her voice found a strength she hadn’t been sure it held anymore, not with him. “I don’t need you there, Logan, It’s okay, I’ll find someone else…”

“SECOND VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST…”

Veronica turned and glared.

“Okay.” She had to stop herself yelling the last words. “That would be great, Logan, thanks. I’ll see you Saturday.”

Her thumb hovered over the end call button before she finally pressed it.

“I hate you, just so you know.”

“Feeling’s mutual, Mars.”

Her chest burned with resentment.

“Then why do you even care?” He had no right to force her into doing that, none at all. “Why don’t you just let me go off and get myself killed?”

Despite her claims to the contrary, Veronica had assumed deep down that she would always get back together with Logan, that they would fall in synch again sooner or later. They always did. And no matter how deeply they hurt each other, it always hurt less than staying apart. They were like magnets drawn to the proverbial pain.

The in-between was hurtful, though, and she didn’t relish Logan being obligated to spend an awkward Saturday night by her side. There was still too much between them, too much hurt and betrayal and anger and just a little too much longing to ever make it comfortable.

And Lamb had no right to force them into breaking their unspoken avoidance rule early.

“Like I want you on the same side as me?” He joked, made it just this side of cutting. “Keeping you alive keeps me sane.”

“Get out.” She glared at him, finding an aim for her frustration. “Just get the hell out.”

“Fine.” He hissed back. “Consider me gone.”

He moved as if to walk past her, a vague attempt at storming out that was almost laughable, except for the brief frisson of electricity that shot through her arm.

They both stood still and she ran her fingertips over the goosebumps that pimpled in his wake.

“What was that?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

The bare skin of her arm twitched, itched in mid air as she lightly ran her fingers over it. She looked down and frowned, confused and still angry, resentful.

“Don’t ever do it again.”

But she’d whispered it to empty air.

***

He was bored and she was asleep.

There was something immensely unsatisfying about looking elsewhere. The sun was beginning to shine through the window and there were several photographs stuck to her wall he was sure could be interesting, a mountain of clothes to peruse and probably a dog somewhere in the apartment he could play with.

The fragile edges of her eyelids crinkled, but the rest of her face was smoothed out and peaceful, and he took in each separate lash that lay against her cheek. One of her hands was curled in under her cheek, he could make out the little white half moon crescents of her nails as her fingers twitched slightly. The tiny hair that covered her whole body, like soft peach fuzz, waived on the top of her lip when she breathed in through her nose.

She really was quite beautiful when she wasn’t talking.

He didn’t mean to do it, not really, but he couldn’t help himself.

His hand brushed against the side of her face and he felt the same sizzle that had gone through him before. Contact. Contact with anything at all caused a delicious sensation, but contact with her was indescribable. He felt her hair, soft and silky, ran through it like a breeze until the different strands of it lifted an inch off the pillow and floated.

A crease appeared in the middle of her forehead.

If he could breathe, he would have held his breath as she relaxed back into sleep. There weren’t many things he particularly missed about his life, but solidity and texture were definitely there. He wanted to be able to touch things, touch her even, and make a difference. He wanted to be felt.

Air flowed over her nose and the skin there crinkled as she turned her face away.

“Mnnnnnn.” Her voice was thick and heavy with sleep, still a murmur in the middle of a dream. “Immmmmaa.”

He blew a breeze over her cheeks and watched her expression change.

“Not now.” She mumbled. “Mmmsleeeping.”

There were rustles he tried not to hear, the shuffling of her body under the blanket that would only have him picturing things he really shouldn’t. Her hand came up, passing right through him, and wiped clumsily over her face, sweeping away the barest traces he’d left behind.

As he watched her roll over, pulling the blanket after her like a cocoon, he chuckled to himself.

***

Veronica tapped at the keys on her laptop. Hard, precise, careful taps one after the other. Click, click, click. The sound echoed in her ears and she bit her lip against the too quiet backdrop. It was getting to her, the self-imposed silence she’d ordered upon herself.

She looked over to the bed and saw him lying on his back, hands folded on the top of his chest and his eyes closed.

He looked dead and, for an absurd moment, she almost teased him about the idea.

Before she remembered.

“Do you miss it?”

His eyes opened and he swiveled his neck to look at her.

“I’m allowed to speak now? What, is the essay finished?”

With deliberate movements, she lowered the screen of the laptop and folded her hands together, leaning her chin on the top of them.

“Do you miss it?” She repeated casually, knowing he would answer. “All of it? Any of it?”

They stared at each other and she quirked the corner of her mouth. She held the upper hand, she knew it, because he was bored and she’d just moved things to his favorite topic: himself. Her nails tapped on the computer casing, counting down the wait.

One.

Two.

Thr…

“I guess.” He sat up. “Sometimes.”

“Well?” Tap, tap. “Can you be more specific? What do you miss?”

The response was instant.

“Beer.”

“Huh.” She blinked. “You sure you don’t wanna think about it? You can take a moment, you know. I won’t mind.”

“Beer.” He repeated slowly, with a nod of his head. “And pancakes with warm syrup. Thursday night poker with the guys. Lifting weights until it hurt. A hot shower on a cold morning. The feel of a really good woman.”

His eyes gave her a once over.

“Sex.”

“Ew.” Veronica wrinkled her nose. “That was almost poetic.”

“But true.” He shrugged and raised his brows at her in challenge. “Tell me you wouldn’t miss it.”

She gave him a sly smile of her own.

“Sex with women? Not so much.”

He grinned.

“Oh, but have you had a good woman? That’s the question. Because I don’t think if you’d…”

Her laptop snapped back open with finality.

“No, thank you.” She cut him off. “I think it’s fairly safe to say I’m definitely in the boy camp. I’ve experienced some of their offerings and I’m a happy customer with the plan I’ve got.”

Her brain returned firmly back to her writing assignment and she told herself she didn’t hear the cocky whistling off to the side.

***

There was something particularly seedy about hiding in a girl’s bedroom while her father lounged in the next room watching television. Even considering the fact that he wasn’t technically corporeal or that Keith couldn’t really see him.

He and Veronica had tested that particular theory in one somewhat hilarious encounter that included very strange questions, some charades, and resulted in Keith asking Veronica if she thought she might like to visit a psychiatrist.

It just felt awkward sitting in a room watching a man who couldn’t see him back.

Although, history suggested he wouldn’t have to wait long. He didn’t usually appear to an empty room, so he assumed Veronica would be home any minute. It was just incredibly dull waiting.

“Yes.” He picked up the sound of her voice in the next room and it made him sit up. “Yes, of course.”

She sounded cheerful. Too cheerful. As if she was on the verge of breaking, wrapping her hands around the neck of whomever she was talking to, and squeezing until their head popped. He should know, he’d been on the receiving end of that voice plenty of times.

Whoever it was, she was bored and very near frustrated.

“Yes, thank you.” A slightly warning edge had entered her voice. “Goodnight.”

A small, deep harrumph of complaint sounded by the floor and Lamb looked down to see the dog glaring at the door as if he was deciding whether or not to make himself useful.

“Yup.” He agreed. “Noticed that, too, did ya?”

“No.” Her voice jumped an octave; part nerves part annoyance. “Seriously, goodnight.”

Then the door closed.

“How was your night, sweetie?”

Well, it was good to know that Keith was an equal opportunity smug smartass.

“Oh, don’t start, Dad. I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

She came into her bedroom moments later and, to her credit, she no longer blinked in surprise when she saw him. There was a slight narrowing of her eyes, though, that couldn’t quite hide her displeasure. Lamb took in the upsweep of her hair and the slightly frilly blouse she was wearing.

“Well.” He sighed. “If that’s the quality of talent you’ve got around here, no wonder you kept going back to the Echolls boy.”

Her glare would have been lethal if it wasn’t already too late.

“Don’t you start, either.” But the corners of her mouth threatened to turn up as she tossed her purse onto the bed. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Seriously.” He continued with a small flick of his wrist. “That guy sounded really dull.”

Her smile made a brief flicker of an appearance.

“Leave him alone.” She ordered with an imperious tilt of her chin upwards. “Piz is nice.”

“Piz?” He just knew his eyebrows had spiraled all the way up. “His name is Piz? Are you kidding me?”

Her amusement was barely hidden as she collapsed into the chair by the desk and began flipping shoes across the room with a simple flick of each ankle.

“He _is_ nice.” She stated firmly. “He’s just a little…”

“Dull?” Lamb suggested. “Thick as two planks?”

“… Persistent.”

She corrected him with a sigh and leaned back in the chair to stretch her arms up and begin picking pins out of her hair. He watched the hem of shirt ride up to expose a thin line of belly skin, flat and smooth.

“Then why’d you go out with him?”

“I didn’t.” Veronica shook her head and he couldn’t figure if it was in response to his question or simply to loosen all the strands of her hair. “Not really. Wallace tricked me.”

He spun through what was left of his memory.

“Wallace…?”

“My friend.” Her hand hovered over the desk and she dropped the hairpins onto it, one by one. “Soon to be ex-best friend if he keeps this up. Piz is his roommate at college.”

A face flickered in his mind. The short black kid who’d tried to insinuate things about his sexuality. Scrappy little mutt, just another boy she had wrapped around her little finger. Well, she certainly had no shortage of them around town.

Veronica groaned as she leaned forward, her hands coming up to cradle the top of her skull, and Lamb watched her fingers massage her scalp, watched the play of them through her hair. She looked like she had a headache.

“He thought he was doing the right thing.” Her voice came muffled from beneath the curtain of her hair. “He thinks I need help getting over Logan.”

“And you don’t think you do?” It was slightly strange, actually having a conversation with her that didn’t include some form of bitching or grandstanding. “Because you’re already over him?”

Her fingers crawled around to the front of her forehead and she parted her hair down the middle, pulling both sides back like a curtain to give him a frown.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Because you don’t want to be over him. Got it.”

The reaction was instant as she stood up, her back straight and her face set.

“You get nothing.” The subject, as it was, was officially over. Even he could see that. “It’s not that simple.”

She strode over to her closet and began viciously pulling clothes out of drawers. Her shirt got stuck and she tugged violently, hitting her fist on the corner of the cupboard door. He caught the flinch that crossed her face as she brought it in close to her body.

“I’m going to bed.” She took a breath and looked at him calmly, but he could see something behind her eyes that looked suspiciously like tears. “Don’t hang around too long.”

He stayed still and watched her walk over to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, she was calmer and her hair was tied in a small ponytail at the back of her neck. The skin on her face shone pinkly, as if she’d just scrubbed it clean, and she was dressed in boy shorts and a tank top.

She didn’t say anything as she crawled underneath the blankets.

“Goodnight Veronica.”

He counted out two and a half minutes before he heard her sigh.

“Night.”

***

“How…?”

The back of Veronica’s teeth itched and she grimaced to curb her immediate comment.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

There was a growing pressure between her eyes that threatened to become an ache of mammoth proportions and split her sinuses wide open. She wasn’t entirely surprised to find him waiting for her. He had developed a knack of popping up at the most inconvenient moments.

She was actually beginning to think that the sole purpose of his presence was to drive her insane and, once that had happened, he’d finally earn his wings. Or horns. Or shiny gold Sheriff Star Halo presented by a dozen nubile scantily dressed women or whatever the hell he wanted and was working for.

If that was the case, he’d made leaps and bounds tonight.

“You didn’t get what you needed?”

The laugh stuck in her throat as she hooked her thumb under the strap of her camera and lifted it off her shoulder as evidence.

“Oh, I got plenty, thank you. Everything I need to close the case and get paid, plus more. That part was fine.”

Two months ago, two years ago, had anyone told her she would be more than comfortable walking into her bedroom to find Donald Lamb lounging about her belongings and digging for information on what could only be described as the most awkward night of her incredibly disastrous relationship, or non-relationship or whatever the hell they were calling it, with Logan Echolls, it would have taken her hours to stop laughing. After she’d stopped hyperventilating.

“But…?”

She sighed.

“It was a night of pure hell.” The quicker she answered the question, the quicker he’d let the issue go. There was nothing quite as pesky as a ghost with nothing to do. “Does that make you happy? It was uncomfortable and awkward and long and I would rather have some teeth pulled than do that again. Okay?”

It was hard to figure out which was worse, the drawn out silences or the brief, stilted moments where Logan had automatically reached out to hold her car door before changing his mind, pausing, and then continuing, or the time she’d started to make a comment that she’d cut off because, as the whole night had driven home, they just weren’t together any more. Not like that.

Being Logan’s ex was difficult enough without having to spend time with him in enclosed spaces.

“Maybe…” Lamb was obviously picking up on the brittle state of her nerves, the very tenuous grip she held on herself now that she was home and free from having to pretend. “Maybe he wasn’t the best person for the job?”

Veronica threw the camera on the desk, not even caring about the loud thump it made.

“Oh really?” She spat. “You think? You’re a goddamn genius, you are. Where the hell were you when I was making that mistake? Oh, that’s right, you were the one that made me do it! With insight like yours, I’m just surprised anyone was able to creep up on you long enough to hit you in the head. Jesus.”

And just like that, as quickly as she’d snapped, she deflated.

He didn’t say anything.

“Sorry.” Silence. “I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

Her knees gave into the fatigue and she fell back on to the bed, bouncing slightly as she inched her way to her pillow. She closed her eyes and pretended not to feel the energy in the room change, pretended that she was by herself in the dark.

“It was just a very bad night.” Admitting things to an empty room was a lot easier that the alternative. “It was supposed to be easier. He was supposed to pretend to be happy moving on with Parker and I was supposed to pretend that it didn’t hurt to see him be happy moving on.”

Her fingers tapped idly on the somewhat sickly feeling inside her belly. She hadn’t eaten much all night, but the eternal twist of nerves had driven her to near nausea.

“And you couldn’t?” When he spoke again, he was obviously as reluctant as her about the topic of conversation. “Pretend it didn’t hurt?”

She sighed.

“No, he didn’t.” Her face physically flinched at the memory, Logan’s too honest pleading stare. “Pretend. He and Parker have decided to stay just friends and he wasted no time in telling me.”

It had been brutal, that stark, awkward moment when Logan had waited for her response, the hangdog puppy looks in his eyes that begged for any reaction. Anything at all, any sign of hope, something other than the small uttered ‘oh’ she’d given him.

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” It occurred to her that he sounded altogether too excited about the subject, about her own life. “This is your chance!”

The conversation was going in circles.

“It’s not that simple, I told you.” But he wouldn’t leave it at that, she knew, and a deep breath in gave her the resolve to continue. “He really hurt me and I’m not sure I’m ready to forgive him yet.”

There was a disturbance in the air near her head.

“You want to talk about it?”

She hadn’t exactly said the words out loud yet and doing so made them more permanent, made them real.

“He slept with someone else.”

The last thing she’d been expecting was laughter.

“He cheated on you?” Mean, incomprehensible laughter. “That little shit cheated on you and you’re still moping over him? Jesus fucking Christ.”

“It’s not…” But the words were getting stale and she couldn’t repeat them again, so she went with the truth. It seemed less complicated. “We weren’t together at the time. It wasn’t cheating, it was… It wasn’t the what, it was the who.”

A pregnant silence hung in the air and she opened her eyes to look at the ceiling. There was minimal light coming through her window and everything was tinted a dark shade of bluish black. Shapes danced in the corners of her eyes, her shelves, her desk, but no details.

And no Donald Lamb.

“It was…” The name stuck in her throat like half chewed gum. “It was Madison Sinclair.”

“Well.” The ripple came through the air and it made her close her eyes again. “That must have been a rewarding experience for him.”

It sounded like shared sympathy, and not with her. The very idea that he and Logan could share some sort of primitive male bonding over the act of sex with… with… with that particular person did nothing to ease the growing nausea.

It must have shown in her face.

“What?” There was a hint of defensiveness in his voice that was easily recognizable. “You weren’t even together, right? By your own admission, he didn’t cheat. And you’re still getting in a tizzy about it? Do you honestly have a set standard of women your men are allowed to touch in your absence? I’ve heard about leashes, but…”

“No. Anyone.” To her embarrassment, she could feel the tremor of her lip, the tell tale shiver of her chin. “He could have done it with anybody, hell, he could have serviced the entire female constituency of Neptune for all I care. It’s just… anyone but her. Anyone.”

The familiar, hated flashes returned: Madison’s sneering lip and triumphant glance.

“You really don’t like her, do you?” It was too casual, too easy for him. “Well, she doesn’t like you, I can tell you that. So I guess it’s fair.”

Veronica lifted her hand and stroked the air a foot in front of her face. It wasn’t anything physical, she couldn’t name it, but she felt the difference and she knew he was there. He was too close, much too close.

“I just…” Her fingers twitched. “I already had you to laugh at my rape, I didn’t need him to do it, too.”

Then he was gone and her fingers curled into the emptiness.

“What?” He was all the way across the room; she heard the distance. “What the hell are you talking about Mars?”

The tears prickled at her eyes, burning, and she swallowed deeply.

“She gave it to me. She handed me the GHB.” It was all she could do to stop herself spitting the words out. “And when I told her, she laughed at me.”

“She drugged you?” The venom in his voice was both confusing and somehow oddly amusing. “That bitch…?”

“It wasn’t on purpose. Dick Casablancas gave her a dose without her knowing. She saw me, she spat in the drink, and handed it off. It was supposed to be funny.”

Honesty was supposed to make things clearer, but defending Madison Sinclair definitely did not make sense, nor did it make her feel any better.

“So…?” And she could hear the doubt in his voice. “You blame her for not getting raped in your place? Is that it?”

Frustration gurgled like acid.

“That’s not… I wouldn’t…” The very implication was sickening. “Did you know, after I woke up raped and alone, I walked out to my car to find the word ‘slut’ sprawled across the windscreen? That was her. She spent years humiliating me after one of the worst experiences in my life, even after she knew what happened. And Logan knew it. He knew that when he chose to sleep with her anyway.”

“You didn’t tell me that part.”

That time, the laugh was hers, slightly bitter.

“And what would you have done? Laugh harder?” If she had to face her truths, so did he. “I mean, god, how many times in those days were you called to the school on vandalism and harassment charges? All of them deliberate acts against me. You saw what they did; you saw what they wrote, you knew what happened and you did nothing. You were just as bad as her.”

Even when he didn’t answer, she knew he wasn’t gone.

“No, you were worse.” Her swallow was thick and it choked hard. “You had a responsibility.”

When he did respond, his voice was soft and it scaled layers of skin off her flesh.

"I’m…”

“Don’t.” She bit it out. “Don’t even. I stopped expecting anything from you a long time ago. But Logan, I expected better from him and I got burned. I always do”

Veronica didn’t bother changing, she honestly didn’t care, her body and her mind were tired and she was finished with the discussion. She rolled over and hugged her arms in close to her body, fingers curling around the divots of her hips.

***

Lamb tried to leave.

He just didn’t know how.

Nothing worked. He tried willing himself away, tried imagining a soft dissolve, tried wishing really hard. Quietly begging whatever power was listening, whoever was controlling the entire situation, didn’t seem to help either. He no longer had a physical body to use in attempting to get what he wanted so desperately. He was stuck.

And on the other side of the room, Veronica continued to whimper in her sleep.

He’d been quiet for so long he wasn’t sure if she’d known he was still there when he first heard her cry. When she’d fallen asleep, he’d thought maybe it was over, maybe she’d get rest, but then the nightmares had started.

She’d cried in his office three years earlier and since then he had not allowed himself to think about it. She’d never let him see any weaknesses again. Every time he’d seen her she’d been strong and astringent and sarcastic and out for his blood, even against the odds. Even when she’d given statements with blood drying cracked on her forehead, with bruises blotting her skin, with the death of her father haunting her eyes, she’d held her head up and met his gaze with nothing less than a complete ‘fuck you’ to greet him.

For so long he’d expected nothing less than her scathing bitterness that he had forgotten she had vulnerability.

He did not like it.

“Veronica.” Waking her up was the only thing he hadn’t tried yet. “Come on, it’s alright.”

Something about the thought of which expression she’d use when she realized who it was had kept him from it. He was probably the last person, dead or alive, she wanted to see her in such a state.

A low, broken cry escaped her throat.

“Sh.” And when he looked, the expression on her face, warped and pained, hurt him even more. “It’s… it’s okay.”

She cringed from the sound, twisting further into the cocoon of sheets she’d managed to pull around herself. He didn’t know what else to do, he’d never been good at the comfort side of things, not with anyone and especially not with her.

It happened without him really thinking about it and he found himself dissolving again, found himself using air and space and something he couldn’t define to brush patterns across her face, to lift the tendrils of her hair again.

Something about it, the touch, the contact, he didn’t know, something seemed to work. She quieted, her face smoothing out and her whimpers dying off to a soft sigh that sat in her mouth.

He didn’t leave until she’d fallen into a peaceful sleep, the name of Logan on her lips.

***


	2. Chapter 2

**Spoilers:** Takes place just after 3.14 "Mars Bars", but assumes information from 3.15 "Papa's Cabin", so  SPOILERS AHOY.  
 **Warnings:** Sexual content. Voyeurism.  
 **Disclaimer:** This is... I have no idea. But they don't belong to me. Nah uh.  


*~*~*~*  
 **THE GHOST AND MRS MARS**  
*~*~*~*

***

“You look nice.”

Veronica sighed and put a smile on her face, she tried to push it all the way into her eyes, but she wasn’t entirely sure she’d succeeded. 

“Wow. Subtle.”

She shoved her arms through the sleeve of her jacket, grabbed the handle of her purse and turned to pose in front of her father as he sat on the couch watching television, Backup sitting disinterested at his feet. 

“What?” His eyebrows rose and his face smoothed out in a look of innocence. “I’m not allowed to compliment my daughter before she goes out anymore? Since when?”

“It’s not out.” The correction was automatic. “It’s just a few people at Wallace’s dorm. I already told you.”

“Commonly known as a party. A college party, to be exact.” Keith raised his glass in a toast. “Have a nice time.”

She frowned. 

“Don’t be smarmy, it doesn’t suit you.”

“Really? Because it feels quite comfortable.” But his expression turned serious. “I’m just happy that my college aged daughter is actually participating in traditional college activities with her college aged friends, activities that don’t include me waiting for a phone call from local hospitals and/or my recently acquired workmates.”

The cell inside her jeans pocket began to burn a hole and she continued the silent argument with herself about whether or not she should actually call Mac and tell her not to bother. 

“It’s just a party. It’s not like it’s a full blown kegger.” She smiled innocently. “That was last semester.”

His frown was immediate. 

“Veronica…”

“Look, it’s nothing big.” The rush to cover the impending lecture was instinct. “It’s Wallace’s dorm having a party. It’s not supposed to be fun, I’m probably going to spend the entire night avoiding talking to the people I know, including my ex, my best friend whose job it is to keep my ex away from me, my ex’s almost but not quite rebound partner, my best friend’s roommate who’s looking to be my possible rebound partner, my other very good friend whose job it is to keep my ex’s almost but not quite rebound partner away from me, all while keeping said ex and said best friend’s roommate from getting into a physical confrontation.”

Keith blinked. 

“You need to widen your social circle, honey. Have you ever thought about getting friends you actually like?”

She scrunched her face up in thought. 

“Huh. What’s that like?” A knock on the door made the tension in her spine ratchet up a notch and she plastered on a cheery smile. “Oh, look, here’s Mac now.”

“Hey!” Mac’s smile was just as cheery and just as false. “You ready?”

“Just…” She wasn’t sure what did it, but something changed and she turned back towards her room. “Give me a minute, I’m nearly there.”

The walk back through the hall was short and quick, but it felt as if it took too long, too many minutes, and she felt two pairs of eyes boring into the back of her skull. She closed the door behind her softly and leaned against it for support. 

He was sitting on her bed. 

“Hey.” Something foreign washed through her then, made her almost shy, something akin to relief. “You’re back.”

When he looked up at her, she saw confusion masking a different emotion, something deeper and more troubling, like concern. It looked strange on him, alien. It had been a while since she’d been forced to endure the night with Logan and the resulting extra special blow out afterward. She didn’t particularly want to rehash that night and all the baggage that came with it.

“It’s been nearly two weeks.” She explained softly, with a shrug. “I didn’t know if you were…”

“Oh.”

They were both stilted and uncomfortable. In the silence that followed, his eyes swept her up and down. 

“You going out?”

She wasn’t sure why that caused a guilty flush to heat up her cheeks or her hand to rise up and toy with a stray strand of hair near her ear. 

“Yeah.” Her lungs forced a deep breath and she let it out slowly. “Wallace is making me go, I don’t want to, but he’s even enlisted Mac’s help. She’s picking me up, even though she lives in the dorm right next to his. There’s very little avenue for backing out.”

Lamb didn’t look away and his eyes were suddenly too direct and too forward. It made her bristle. 

“Good.” He nodded. “You should go.” 

Her shoulders prickled and her spine straightened in annoyance. 

“What the hell do you care? What if I don’t want to…?”

“Jesus, Veronica.” He sighed and stood in one wavering motion, sudden and exasperated. “Are you nineteen or ninety? Just go out with some friends. Enjoy your life.”

Her jaw set stubbornly. 

“At least I have one.”

She regretted the words the second they came out of her mouth, but he gave her no time to take them back. 

“Yeah?” He challenged, unwavering. “Well, doesn’t that make you the lucky one? And let me tell you, it’s so much fun sitting here watching you waste it.”

They were face to face and she immediately faltered, tried to take a step back and pressed herself further against the door. 

“And you were such a paradigm of living life?” Trapped, there was only one thing left to do; fight her way out. “Your grand life of beer and women and arresting innocent teenagers? Great example.” 

“Forget it.” He sighed, dismissing her with a wave. “Do what you want, I don’t care.”

Watching him turn away did not feel like triumph. 

“Nothing about this is what I want.”

He didn’t turn back around. 

“Are you still here?”

“Oh, don’t worry.” She threw the words out like an insult. “I’m going.”

“Great.” The word was spat at her as soon as she’d turned around and gotten a grip on the door handle. “Have a wonderful time!”

“Fine!” She couldn’t help yelling the last bit as she slammed the door behind her. “I will!”

They were angry steps that took her back out to the living room, large and purposeful and too quickly to realize what she was doing until the blank, curious faces stopped her. Keith craned his neck to look around the corner of the hall. 

“Is there someone back there?”

“Um…” She shrugged. “No. Just a phone call, that’s all. It’s nothing.”

Mac frowned. 

“Veronica, are you…?”

“I’m fine.” She shouldered the studded handle of her bag and took a deep breath. “Let’s go have a brilliant time!”

The doubtful expression on Mac’s face made her release the air in her lungs and she smiled. 

“Well, let’s just go, then.”

***

He hadn’t lied. 

He just hadn’t told her the truth. 

It wasn’t as if he was under some moral obligation to explain the details or correct her version of events. He had no more say in the where and when of it than she did. It certainly wasn’t as if he’d _asked_ to spend several nights pacing the small confines of her bedroom. 

Two weeks, she’d claimed, and she’d had nightmares for at least five of those nights. 

It was becoming automatic, the quick release of energy until he was there with her, soothing her, easing her panicked whimpers down and calming whatever her dreams had been. He was fairly sure it wasn’t a new regime, either; her own physical responses were too automatic, too practiced to be sudden. 

She’d obviously been having nightmares for a while and someone had been there to calm most of them down. The best guess was the Echolls kid and he just assumed that whatever else had been involved in the increasingly screwed up relationship, as he was beginning to see it, comfort had been a major part of that. 

It brought a different level to his own memories, all the instances of her brittleness towards him and the times he’d even suspected the flinch she’d controlled in response to his own taunts. They had a bitter tang to them now, rusted like old tin. 

There were so many small things he could have done, that so many cruel, useless, thoughtless people around town could have done, stupid, useless, fucking trivial things that would have made her life better. 

He was under no suspicion about her defenses, the desperate walls she built up, the way she hid everything. Veronica Mars would have preferred death and dismemberment over letting him, or anyone really, see the weaker sides of herself. 

She wouldn’t have appreciated the truth if he’d told her.

So when he heard the light whimper from the side of the room, Donald Lamb didn’t think twice about going to her. He’d suspected it was going to be a long, hard night when she’d slammed through the door at little past ten, angry and stressed and proving, once again, that she’d been right about not wanting or needing to force herself to go to a stupid party, and he’d obviously been wrong. 

It wasn’t until he stroked the side of her cheek, running a line down the side of her jaw and neck, that the whimper turned into a moan and he felt himself pause. 

It wasn’t a nightmare and it certainly wasn’t a look of pain on her face. 

He wasn’t sure what to do. He sure as hell knew what he _should_ do, but that was beside the point. She had her rules and, as far as he knew, he hadn’t broken any of them. She had yet to create a rule forbidding this. 

Although if she was going to roll over onto her back and arch her neck forward, lips splitting open, she really, really should. 

There was no point denying it, he was already dead after all, but when he’d been living he’d had more than one fantasy about this very girl. Not all of them sweet, but all very definitely leaving him aching and frustrated more with himself than her. 

He swayed above her, great rolling waves of sensation down her throat, up to behind her ears and through her hair. Her response, a deeper moan and the undulating of her body under the coverlet, pulsed through him in a bolt of confusion. 

There was no doubt that the dream, whatever and whoever it was, was more than pleasing, that she was enjoying the results, but he felt… he felt… he felt nothing. The shift of her body created physical motion and nothing else. 

He felt no rush of desire, no great pulsing passion, no flooding of lust; he simply felt nothing and perhaps a little cheated. It struck him as such an obvious solution, that he could barely process the simplicity of it. 

If he wanted to feel anything at all, she had to feel it for him. 

It took concentration, but he managed to lift the edges of the blanket, tug them to the side until he could see more of her, the little tank top she wore to bed, and she shivered in the newfound night air. He stirred the air around her, down the front of her neck and chest until her spine arched. 

He watched the small peaks of her nipples tighten underneath the cotton stretched there. 

“Ohhhhh.” The sleep slurry moan stopped him cold. “Please.”

Before he could even make the decision, he was slammed across to the other side of the room and he folded himself over, tried to block out the rest of the room. She was asleep, she was dreaming, she had no idea he was there or what he was doing. 

He was no better than anyone else who had fucked her over. 

***

Veronica bit the corner of her lip as she zoomed in on the photo on her laptop. 

“What about that Reese woman?” Lamb asked from the corner of the room. “Surely her?”

It tickled the edges of her mouth as she tried to hide her grin. He reminded her of a time when Backup was a puppy, just a few months old, and would worry her ankles, biting on the edges of her pants to attempt to get her attention. 

“She’s annoying, so you have that in common. But she’s also very tiny and a woman. Plus, she wasn’t dead. So, no.”

There were at least a dozen shots on her camera she could use; the main problem now was sorting out which ones. If she did say so herself, it had been a rather successful photographic assignment into the world of sleaze and debauchery. 

“Didn’t Nicole Kidman play a ghost once?”

“Still a woman.” She pointed out. “And also, you’re speaking about Nicole Kidman, so very much no.”

“Fine.” He pouted. “Surely Demi Moore?”

Veronica stopped in her mission of framing the couple through the window and frowned. 

“Say it with me… Wo. Man.” Her brows furrowed in thought. “Not to mention, she wasn’t the dead one. And before you even try to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is crack available in the after life, no, you’re nowhere near cuter than Patrick Swayze, don’t even ask.”

“Well, that’s not fair.” He protested. “You don’t even have a pottery wheel for me to try and make it even.” 

“Ugh.” Veronica screwed up her nose as her hands rose to the top of the screen and began to lower it. “Just, don’t.”

Just before she heard the little click of the laptop snapping shut, a grating buzzing sounds from the side of her desk. It was perfect timing, saving her from any response she was likely to get from Lamb across the room and she held up her hand to quiet him as she grabbed the phone. 

“Hey!” Her throat closed up a little to make her voice high and squeaky and she even smiled brightly to achieve that perfectly annoying lilt. “This is Katie!”

Lamb’s eyes widened in surprise. 

“Oh my god!” She squealed in obvious delight. “I wasn’t expecting you guys to call back so soon! Does this mean I have an audition? Wait, what? I got the part already? Just from my photo? That’s so awesome!”

She made a face and rolled her eyes. 

“My friend Maria told me acting was, like, really hard, she’s gonna be so jealous when she hears about this!” Staying continuously cheerful was honestly tiring. “Yeah, I have my own bikinis, five different sets and they mix and match, and one is a really cute pink…”

Her teeth literally itched from all the falseness. 

“Of course I’m eighteen!” And then she dropped her voice a little. “Well, I will be in a couple of months. Is that going to be a problem?”

Jackpot. 

“Oh, you can? That’s awesome! When do I start?”

She wrote the information down, deliberately ignoring the small hum of disapproval that grew in her ears as she disconnected. 

“What the hell was that?”

It couldn’t be ignored forever, even though she really wasn’t in the mood for whatever protective bullshit he was about to pull on her. For some reason, she couldn’t quite put her finger on the why of it, but he’d been overly solicitous in the last few visits. 

Strangely and undeniably un-Lamb. He made greater efforts to be nicer to her, going out of his way to ignore the deliberate taunts she’d tried to provoke him with, and making rather unsubtle hints and allusions that suggested he was jumping on the ever increasing ‘get Veronica out of the house and into a social life, stat’ movement that was happening among the remaining people in her life. She was seriously considering turning herself into a hermit and telling everyone to go to hell at this point. 

Maybe it was simpler than that, maybe he was just trying to get her out of the apartment and away from him. 

“That was an incredibly sleazy acting agency that prides itself on masquerading as a low budget film production company when they really make low quality adult movies that girls are tricked into starring in.” The pause was for effect. “And the word is they’re not too strict on checking the IDs of their budding young actresses, either.”

“Veronica…”

“No. I’m not taking a bodyguard, especially one I used to date. No, I’m not actually going to be foolish enough to meet them, let alone take off any pieces of my clothing in front of their cameras. No, I wasn’t idiotic enough to give them my real phone number, that’s a disposal cell. And no, you’re not allowed to tell me how incredibly stupid I am for getting involved. Anything else?”

He looked down to the floor. If she didn’t know any better, she could swear he was blushing. 

“You do that too well.”

She blinked in surprise for a second and mulled over what he’d just said. 

“Verbally taking you down a peg or two?” Her head quirked to the left. “Well, yeah, I guess I do.”

“Pretend to be happy.” The way he admitted it almost sounded reluctant. “You should try the real thing more often.”

And… that was more of the confusing new Lamb. She really didn’t know what to make of him like that. Honestly, it would be more comfortable if he lobbed a few direct, scathing insults and taunts at her and then went away. 

“I wasn’t pretending to be happy.” She frowned. “I was pretending to be incredibly stupid and gullible. Happy was just a side effect.” 

“Fine.” He huffed. “Then you do incredibly stupid and gullible really well.”

Her mouth twitched again, even as she crossed her arms over her chest in indignation. That was easier, that was familiar, that she could handle. 

“You are sure?” She had to stop herself giggling out loud as his face darkened and her altered voice lowered in pitch to a flirting mood. “Because I am told my accents are what keep me popular.”

“Stop it, ‘Martina’.”

Her shoulders shook and she pretended to frown.

“But Sheriff!” Her voice took on a quasi-offended tone. “You promised to keep me in de loop!”

“Okay, that’s it!”

A handful of her hair tugged down gently and she spun her head to look into empty hair. 

“Hey! What…?”

Then she felt the impression of a hand at the sensitive side of her waist and she twisted away instinctually, the reflexive giggle rising in her throat.

“Stop it!”

But he didn’t and Veronica learned one important lesson. 

You could not tickle back when your opponent was not really there. 

***

“Veronica?” He called her name a little less gently than the situation really called for. “Pssst. Hey, are you awake?”

She grumbled under her breath and smushed the pillow up under her face with her hand as she rolled away from him. 

“No. Go away.”

“The sun’s up!” He deliberately made his voice cheerful. “C’mon!”

“It’s six am.” She pointed out through a mouthful of down. “And if you don’t let me sleep, I will find eight ways to kill you again. Go away.”

He agreed with her, actually, and had anyone decided to pull a stunt like this when he’d been alive, he would have had absolutely no hesitation in pulling out his service revolver and shooting them between the eyes. None at all. 

But he didn’t entirely feel all that comfortable watching her sleep anymore. 

“I’m bored!” He whined. “Why don’t we work on that college kid’s case? I think it’s the girlfriend.”

She glared at him through sleepy eyes as she threw the cover down and sat up, her face fuzzy and her lids blinking. Her yawn was long and, somehow, she managed to make it angry. 

“What do you mean ‘we’? It was my case.” Her feet slid down to the floor, one by one. “And it was the roommate. I solved it two days ago.”

“Oh.” The timeline threw him a bit and he sagged. “Well, we really should find someway of keeping track of all these…”

He followed the line of her very pointed glare and came face to face with her corkboard. A large page of which had several names listed on it and, true to form, the college kid had been crossed off. 

“Huh. Would you look at that?”

She stood up and stretched. 

“I am going to have a shower. And you? You are going to find some way to make this up to me, or when I’m finished in there, I’m going to call a priest. Do you hear me?”

***

“It’s her.”

Veronica rolled her eyes and popped another kernel of corn into her mouth. 

“You always think it’s the woman.”

At the other end of the sofa, Lamb winked. 

“That’s because it always is.”

She snuggled deeper into the blanket wrapped around her legs and pulled the large bowl of popcorn closer to her chest, carefully eyeing the contents. After she had picked out a nice, large, fluffy white sphere, she delicately picked it up between her thumb and forefinger and aimed it right through the middle of his forehead. 

It bounced off the back of the sofa and onto the floor. 

“Backup?” She warned without even looking. “Don’t bother.”

The dog settled his head back on his paws with a grumble. 

“That was rude.” Lamb frowned. “You don’t see me throwing foodstuffs through your head, do you?”

She grinned quite perkily and raised her eyebrows in challenge. 

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Well.” He huffed. “Someone’s being all Miss high and mighty corporeal tonight.”

It didn’t make her smile go down at all. 

“Fine, explain to me why you think she did it.”

By the answering quirk of his eyebrows, she could guess the level of thought that would go into the answer. He enjoyed riling her up and she set her shoulders to prepare. 

“Because she has the biggest breasts.”

“Ugh.” She tossed another piece of popcorn through him. And another. “Is that the basis of your investigative skills? No wonder you never solved anything.”

“Hey!” He held up his hand to stop the onslaught, somewhat ineffectually. “I’ll have you know I arrested plenty of people and many of them didn’t even have breasts!”

Her nose wrinkled up for several seconds as she tried to discern whether or not he was adding to the copious breastless jokes she’d heard in her lifetime. Eventually, though, she relaxed and decided the best course of action was to toss more popcorn at him. 

“It’s obviously the neighbor.” She said as she finally spared a kernel for her mouth, pausing to lick a stray line of salt from the edge of her thumb. “He has the motive, the alibi that’s a little too tight to be real, he’s a real estate agent with enough opportunity, access and information on the house, and he moves his eyes too quickly when he talks.”

Lamb laughed. 

“You think too much.” 

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

Fifteen minutes later, Veronica narrowed her eyes at the television screen as the neighbor in question was released from custody and all signs pointed to Lamb’s original suspect, the Bra Heavy Wonder. 

“Fine.” She deposited the bowl on the table and crossed her arms across her chest. “You win. How’d you know?”

The look he turned on her was one usually relegated to slow kindergarten kids who ate the red crayon, the mentally challenged, Cliff, and… apparently… her. 

“She had the biggest chest.” 

“But she didn’t make any sense as a suspect!”

It was almost insulting. 

“See this? This here?” Lamb gestured his hands towards the television screen. “It’s not real. It’s written by people who want to make money. The audience, which would be guys like me, want to see big-breasted girls with an evil streak think they’ve gotten away with it, but end up with nothing as they rot in jail.”

She quirked her head to the left. 

“Why?”

“Because we’re men.” He spelled it out, slowly and carefully, annunciating each and every word. “And men like tits.”

Her mouth fell open and she slapped a hand to her cheek. 

“Oh my god, really?”

“Smartass.”

“One of us has to be.”

Just as he was about to reply, no doubt with something equally disturbing and trite, something that makes her really wonder why she always ended up feeling more comfortable in biting, argumentative relationships than those with happy, normal, regular people, the phone rang and she got up to answer it. 

“Hello?” Immediately her voice warmed. “Hey dad, I saved you some delicious tv dinner. I know how much you…”

He didn’t wait for her to finish, breaking in with a bone weary voice. 

“No, no I’m not alone.” Her eyes wandered back to the sofa where Lamb was sitting hunched down near Backup, making faces, experimenting with different reactions he could get from the dog. “I’m with a friend, why?”

She didn’t miss the sudden jerk of Lamb’s head, the way he looked up to meet her eyes in surprise, but the conversation distracted her. 

“Oh my god, what? Are you okay? What happened?” Her fear spiked hard, soothed very slowly by Keith’s reassurances. “Okay, okay, yeah. How long? Don’t do that to me!”

Her thumb pressed the disconnect button and she began to breathe deeply, Lamb’s eyes bored into her and she looked up to answer his unspoken question. The phone clicked lightly on the bench when she put it down. 

“He’s not coming home tonight.”

Keith had been spending the night baby sitting a new deputy, showing him the ropes and holding his hand during the man’s first night patrol shift. When she’d explained it to Lamb earlier, he’d made a snide comment about Keith going out of his way to impress the staff and the local constituency with his Sheriff-ing skills just before the upcoming election. 

She had kept a lid on the answering rejoinder that Keith certainly wouldn’t have been Neptune’s first Sheriff to do so, to gently point out it was something he’d always done, even years before, back to the days when Lamb had been a wide eyed junior deputy scared of his own shadow. 

Lamb hadn’t had a snappy reply to that. 

“There was a situation with some gangs, it got pretty ugly, and the new guy got stabbed pretty badly. Dad’s gonna stay with him at the hospital. Guy doesn’t have much family in town.”

The _you know how it is_ floated unsaid between them. 

“So, you’re off the leash for tonight, then?”

She wasn’t sure exactly what about the words put her on edge; she only knew that they did. 

“Yeah.” A frown crept between her brows. “I’m planning to get really wild and add butter to the popcorn. Maybe I’ll crack the lid of a root beer. Hack into some illegal cable and watch Seinfeld repeats. Woo.”

“Veronica.” And she was fairly sure, if physiology hadn’t completely let her down, that dead men really didn’t need to breathe, so the sigh in her name must have been purely theatrical. “It’s Friday night. Why don’t you go out somewhere?”

She answered him with a quick nod to the abandoned blanket on the sofa.

“Because, I’m comfortable here.”

He obviously didn’t understand the point she was making, or more likely he refused to understand it, because he didn’t back down. 

“How old are you? You’re supposed to be young! You should be out somewhere. With friends. Remember those?”

Her jaw tightened. 

“I have friends, thank you.”

“And where are they?” He asked. “Why aren’t you with them right now? And don’t you dare tell me it’s ‘complicated’. Find some people who aren’t! Anything rather than sitting here watching bad TV.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” She could feel her blood begin to tighten, to simmer slightly through her veins, and she recognized the feeling of aggression that came with the desperation of being trapped. “Coming from the dead man whose main regrets about losing his poor, pathetic life is the lack of beer and sex.”

It lacked punch and she didn’t get any satisfaction from the spite. 

“At least I had some.” His words, it seemed, were aimed a little more carefully. “What about you?”

She blinked back the surprise. 

“Just because I don’t party all night and sleep around with any skank that moves, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me!”

“Only that you’re scared.” 

He kept his voice even as he stood up, his gaze unwavering, and Veronica felt it like a slap to the face.

“I am not scared.” Her voice was unnaturally flat. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Bullshit.” It was a sneer and a laugh. “You’re nothing but a terrified little girl playing dress ups in the adult world, jumping at her own shadow.”

“Like you know anything about me.”

Apparently, he did. She could see it in the shine of his eyes, the flash of control that left them. He had words bottled up that were going to come out, one way or the other, and she got the feeling she wasn’t going to like them. 

“You’re scared to grow up.” Even though he spoke calmly, she could still hear the sliver of ice in his voice, that last remnant of the bastard she’d hated so effortlessly all these years. “Because the older you got, the more everything you had as a kid turned out to be shit. Your perfect family and your perfect friends…”

The words were too loud inside her head. 

“Stop it.”

But he didn’t. 

“So you hide behind your cameras and you take on all these cases so you can pass judgment on the world and never really be part of it. This way you don’t actually have to join it, do you?”

Her head began to swim, the dizziness sweeping over her like anger trapped inside a desperately frantic heartbeat. 

“You know _nothing_ …”

“And you hide behind me.” He said it simply, so very simply and coldly. “Look at yourself. You’re more comfortable watching television with the ghost of a man you hate than spending time with real people.”

“That’s even richer.” She didn’t even know what she was saying; the words came out already formed and certainly not thought about before it. “Coming from you. You keep pushing me to get out, to go ‘join the world’, and yet you can’t leave me alone. You’re secretly glad I’m all alone; it makes it easier for you, doesn’t it? You’re worse than a jealous lover.”

He shivered and shimmied and she could see tension grow in his stance alone. 

“You’d have been lucky to have me.” He bit the words out as if they tasted bad. “Maybe you would have known what real fucking was about and why it’s something to miss. And believe me, it’s nothing to do with the item in your third drawer! Face it, honey, your history with sex is rather lacking…”

Her cheeks burst into bright hot color at the thought of the shiny silver dildo hiding below all her folded, worn, barely used shirts. 

“You went through my stuff? That was a present; I don’t actually use it!” Then her embarrassment flooded away to make room for the anger. It eddied inside, bubbled up and burst out of her mouth with a betraying tremble of her chin. “Just go to Hell!”

“Oh, I’m already there!” He spat back. “You think it’s easy for me? Look at me! I’m dead, Veronica. Dead! What wouldn’t I give to have all your chances again, but no. No. I’m stuck here watching you waste whatever life you have left.”

She turned away from him, her shoulders shaking as her hand blindly fumbled on the bench for her keys. 

“What would your bestest, dearest, most perfect friend Lilly Kane think of you hiding yourself away? Huh? Think the kids on that bus would just sit at home if they got another chance? You’re a disgrace to their memory.”

Her lungs burned with the effort to breathe past the large boulders that had begun to obscure her airways. 

“I’m the only one.” She gasped it, hating the way she sounded as if she was going to cry. “I’m the only one that cared enough to help them. I lost everything! I lost everything for them. You have no idea how much I’ve been through, so don’t you dare tell me…”

“But you’re still alive!” It sounded more like an accusation than anything else, bitter and jaded. “And you’re wasting it. Why? Because you’re scared. You’re so scared of getting hurt again you won’t even try to move past it. You want the Echolls boy? Then go after him. Can’t get over what he did? Then stop whining about it and move on, let him move on. Just make a fucking choice, Veronica, and act on it.”

She whirled on him, barely seeing anything through the haze of tears that threatened to burst through. 

“You want me to choose?” But he’d gone; she couldn’t see him anywhere. “You want me to fucking choose? Fine!”

She slammed the door on a room empty of everything but Backup’s gentle whine. 

***

The door slammed shut and he immediately perked up. 

She was still angry, she had to be, he knew she’d simmer all night, but he felt the absence of her keenly. And he wanted nothing more than to get into another shouting match, anything, even the anger they’d pulled out and pushed at each other was good if they couldn’t be civil. 

He missed feeling things. 

A loud thump echoed down the small hallway and as the sound registered, Lamb knew that feeling anything, anger especially, wouldn’t be a problem. 

They blurred into focus before he could even think about it, two forms pressed against the wall, eagerly grabbing and grasping at the other. He watched the color of her face deepen as she opened her mouth, sucking in air. 

“Logan.”

The name came out of her throat cracked and desperate, it raked through whatever was left of his entire being. 

He pulsed, in a way he hadn’t for months, there was no other word to describe the eddying feeling, the all encompassing rush of movement as he was forced to watch hands claw at her shoulders, up her neck, fingers that held her chin still as a mouth claimed hers. 

Fingers that held on so deeply he could see the impressions left on her skin, little white dimples of connection that he could never make. 

“Veronica.” Logan buried his face in the side of her neck, stilling against her as he breathed deeply. “God, I missed this.”

It was a slow kiss then, all lips and mouths and desperation, a deep pouring of things that couldn’t be said. He knew what Veronica felt, knew how much she wanted this boy back in her life, how much she regretted what had happened. 

And he knew, without a doubt, that she had been right earlier. No matter what that made him, how badly he came out of the equation, he knew that she had realized what was happening before he had. She was his only link to the world; anything he saw and felt was because she was there. 

Somewhere in the middle of it, he had begun to recognize her as his. Even if it made him base and archaic and all the terms rabid feminists used to describe men like him, he had claimed her in his own mind and now he had to watch another man stake his claim. 

Had to watch as her hands ran down the sides of built up, muscular arms, fingernails barely grazing the sleeves. 

“What are we doing?” The gasp came from Logan’s mouth between hard, fast sucklings of her jaw line. “Are you… are you sure?”

She peeled the boy’s jacket off his shoulders. 

“I want this.” It echoed out of her throat, like the early morning moans that were just his. “I want… I need it.”

To Logan, it had to sound like assurance, like a soft promise of things to come. To Lamb, it sounded like a too desperate conviction, like someone trying to prove a point. 

He watched Logan’s hands spider the sides of her ribs, his fingers twisting in the thin shirt she wore, and he listened to both of their heavy breathing as her abdomen was bared inch by inch. As she raised her arms to allow easier removal, Lamb rose to meet the cloth, lifting corners of it in his wake, and it fluttered around the edges of her fingers. 

Veronica twitched. 

“Harder.” She ordered in a strangled voice. “I want to feel you.”

Logan moaned and Lamb seethed. 

Before he knew it, before he could follow the logic of their movements, he was watching Veronica’s bra fall to the floor and Logan’s mouth make trails down the front of her throat. Loud sucking noises were interspersed with even louder, broken moans. 

Her nipples grew taut between Logan’s fingers, bared to the room, and Veronica threw her head against the wall, grinding the back of it into the plaster as her fingers wrapped around the nape of Logan’s neck. Lamb saw the curve of her spine, the thrust of her hips, he took note of the bend of her knees as she lifted her legs and climbed Logan’s body. 

She’d painted her toenails black to match her fingernails. 

He wanted to leave, he should leave, he knew it. He was playing straight into her hands by staying, by forcing himself to watch, by letting it get under his skin. And he knew, too, that she would hate herself for it in the morning. 

Despite what he always claimed, Veronica wasn’t a naturally vengeful, spiteful shrew; she would feel the after effects of this long after everyone else had forgotten. 

But he couldn’t go, he couldn’t drag his eyes away from Logan’s hand inching up her thigh, the way she bucked in tandem with the rhythmic movements of the boy’s arm, back and forth, a see-saw motion that echoed all the way up their bodies. 

“Fuck.” It was the only legible sound coming from Logan, low and whispered, like an endearment. “Fuck.”

“Logan.” Her answer was a plea rolled into an order. “Do something, please. I need…”

“Fuck… yes.”

And then she was pulled from the wall, propelled down the hallway in Logan’s arms as he maneuvered them to her bedroom, fast and clumsy and desperate. Lamb followed, arriving just in time to see her bounce on the bed, half naked and skin flushed, her skirt bundled high up around her hips. 

It didn’t take Logan long to press his hands to the insides of her knees, spreading her thighs wide, and dip his head down. By the sudden expression of shock on her face, Veronica had not been expecting that move, even if the whimpers she made exposed her approval. 

Her hands fisted, futile and helpless, in the sheet next to her as she squirmed further into the bedding. Her skin was flushed deep and Lamb rose up, blowing air over the blood heated flesh, and her nipples tightened even further. He watched her expression darken, a mix of horror and realization as she grabbed the sheet tighter and pulled it up over her chest, hiding herself. 

“Go.” It was a moan as she closed her eyes momentarily. “Gooooooo.”

But he didn’t. He was there when her lids flew open again, pupils blown out wide with lust. He was drawn to her, drawn to the morbidity of watching her with Logan, of watching her fight to hold onto some semblance of control as Logan’s hand joined his mouth and the wet sounds of him lapping. 

Lamb looked her straight in the eye when she came. 

“Logan.” The name broke out of her lips sounding almost like a cry. “Logan, please… now.”

Her hands pulled Logan up, scaled his body in reverse as she clung to him, brought him up to kiss his mouth. It looked as if she was trying too hard, eating at him, trying to suck him in with her own mouth as her hands swarmed over his skin. 

“Oh, god, Veronica.”

Lamb traced the ends of her hair as Logan pulled back, as the sound of foil tearing filled the room and Veronica raised a hand to push at the air in front of her face. Her fingers swayed in the middle of him, pushing at something he wasn’t sure she could feel, trying to shove him back. 

For just a second, that was all he wanted. He wanted her to be able to touch him, even if it was to push him away, to slap him for being there, anything. 

Then it vanished with the reappearance of Logan. Lamb’s view of Veronica’s face was clouded, distorted with the back of Logan’s head, the hairs on the boy’s neck. 

He listened to the soft whispers, the too familiar sentiments that he shouldn’t be privy to, he watched the shiver of her lips as a drop of sweat appeared above them, the spasm of her fingers against Logan’s back, the angle of her thighs as she clenched them around the boy’s hips and thighs. 

Her arms rose above her head and the fingers of her right hand flattened against the bed head, scratching at the surface, seeking something to hold onto. Lamb studied the musculature of her arm as the tendons pulsed in time with Logan’s thrusts. 

She groaned with every movement, gasping. 

“Harder.” She ordered again. “Harder, make me feel…”

“Oh, god.” Logan panted it into her ear. 

“Make… make me forget…”

The force of each thrust jerked her whole body, slammed her hard against the mattress and Lamb boiled in frustration to see her neck twist as her head hit the end of the bed. He rose high into the room and then fell again, unable to control it, higher and higher, faster and faster. 

Until he couldn’t stop himself and, with a sudden clatter of a photo frame falling off the wall, he couldn’t see the room anymore. 

***

Veronica lay in Logan’s arms and couldn’t sleep. 

It felt right; it felt welcome and familiar. It was exactly what she’d been missing. As much as he’d hurt her, and she wasn’t sure that she had stopped hurting in that regard no matter what she’d told him the night before, her body and her brain were still wired to his. 

The warmth that radiated from his skin, the feel of his light breath tickling the hairs at the back of her neck, the twitch of his fingers inside hers gathered just in front of her chest, his knees cradling the backs of her thighs, all of it was what she had wanted. 

And she deserved none of it. 

She could feel it like a rash on her skin, crawling and itching, everywhere he touched her, everywhere he held her close. Like little ants that marched over her body, underneath the surface, swarming in never ending waves. 

_Look what you did._

Slowly, carefully, she extricated her fingers from his, peeling his wrists back from her like a cloak, and shuffled away from him. Still sleeping, half murmured with a smile that burned, he leaned forward and kissed the back of her neck before letting go. His touch trailed a path down over the sides of her ribs and hip. 

It made her breath catch inside her lungs, hot and scalding. 

As her ears heard the soft rustle of sheets, the unmistakable sounds of Logan settling into the space she’d left behind, a contented sound escaping his lips, Veronica stumbled to the bathroom, her hand fumbling for support against the wall. 

She was a hypocrite. 

In the mirror, her face looked drawn. She liked to think that she was moderately attractive, she knew other people liked how she looked, but most of the time it didn’t matter. She didn’t care what other people thought, they had spent too much of her formative years believing the worst of her based on lies and speculation. She hadn’t always liked herself, hadn’t always looked in the mirror and been proud of the image that looked back at her, but she had stayed true to what she believed and she had been able to meet her own eyes.

Sometimes, though, sometimes it was addictive to realize that others thought highly of her. She would never admit it out loud, but she enjoyed the near adoration that sometimes crept into Logan’s eyes. Out of everyone she knew, he had seen more of herself than she felt comfortable with; he had seen both the best and worst sides of her. And still, somehow, he managed to convey the thought that he still admired her, that somewhere amid all the lies and arguments and betrayals, he still thought her worth looking at.

Seeing herself through Logan’s eyes, she often _liked_ what she saw. 

But just then, finally meeting the disproving gaze of her reflection, Veronica could only see ugliness, stark and brutal. 

Her stomach revolted and she fell to her knees in front of the toilet, emptying the bile that rose suddenly in great spasms. They rolled over her, one after the other, and just when she thought she was finished, it would start again. 

She clenched her hands hard against the sides of the toilet seat, gripping it until her joints began to ache and her head swam. The dizziness washed over her and she struggled to pull herself upright as she clung to the washbasin, running cool water over her hands and face. 

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. 

Most of the times she could fool herself. She had a strict moral code and she lived by it, she expected everyone in her life to do the same. She had seen too much and too much had been done to her to accept anything less. That was the excuse she gave herself when she made the hard choices, the painful ones. 

It was the excuse she’d given herself when she’d torn Logan down, blamed him, accused him of using other people to hurt her, of using Madison to hurt her. Other names flashed through her brain pan, Hannah, Kendall, the very thought of Logan with them was starkly painful. 

And she’d looked him in the eye and told him she could never forgive him for doing that. 

Her hands shook as she twisted the tap handles inside the shower. She let the water get hot, as hot as she could stand it, and then stepped inside, felt the water cascade over her body in angry, heated, accusing waves. 

She wasn’t sure if it had been a lie, she didn’t know if she could get over Logan sleeping with Madison, it still hurt her to think about.

Her traitorous brain could imagine the look on Logan’s face if she told him she’d just used him to get back at another man. It had been more than that and she’d meant everything she’d said, she did want him back, but she couldn’t deny that there had been an ulterior motive in demanding that he brought her back to the apartment. 

Just like she felt she could never forgive him, she had no expectations that he would forgive her. 

She could already see the disgust in his eyes. The way he’d look at her. It would be something akin to the look she feared, the look she tried hard to forget, that deep, vicious gleam in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in years, but she knew was always lurking down inside somewhere. Back when he’d torn strips of her flesh and she hadn’t deserved it. 

But she deserved it now. 

The sobs came hard and fast, caught in her mouth like the rivulets of water that pooled over her cheeks and nose and collected in her lips. She sputtered, not particularly caring about the sound, trying to swallow them back. They fought to get out, large, body shaking cries that made it impossible to stand upright. 

The wall was cool at her back when she leant against it, her knees buckling, and she slid down to the floor. 

As she wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging them close, she felt the barest whisper across the side of her cheek. It grew in depth, even as it made her sob harder. She could almost feel shape in it; form, rather than just a disturbance of air. 

“Go away.” It came out like begging, though she meant it to sound more forceful. “Please, just go.”

Water barraged her from above, thundering down hard against her shoulders, over her knees and between her shins, hot and spiked, hitting her at an angle. As she blinked, she could have sworn some of the streams were disturbed, that there was definite shape. 

“I can’t…” It caught in her throat. “I can’t do this anymore.”

He felt like caresses against her skin, over her shoulders and cheeks, threaded through her hair. She fought the urge to move with it, to move with him. 

“Haven’t you done enough?” Her own words shocked her with their viciousness. It was not his fault; it was hers. She just couldn’t deal with him right then. “Isn’t it enough that I’ve just ruined everything? Everything.”

Her head fell back against the tile with a hard thump she felt echo through her skull. 

“Please, just leave me alone.”

He left with a gush of air, she felt him disappear upwards like smoke, and as she looked up towards the shower head spraying down on her, Veronica saw a shampoo bottle teeter on the shelf. It wavered and toppled, bouncing off the sides of the tiles. 

The sound of the plastic as it bounced between her feet and around her ankles, thudding against her skin, was the loneliest thing she could remember. 

***


End file.
